Blame GOP for woes of Obamacare

Monday

Nov 18, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Clive McFarlane, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Our bankrupt politics is on strident display in the manufactured crisis engulfing Obamacare.

In every newspaper and on every news channel, Republicans can be found salivating over the success of their sabotage campaign, while fair-weather Democrats, fearful of upcoming elections, are backsliding on their commitment to adequate and affordable health care.

And what exactly is feeding the frenzy on both sides?

We are being told that it is the botched rollout of a government website where individuals can shop and sign up for health insurance. We are being told also that it is President Obama's broken promise, the one he made when he said that if people liked their health insurance, they could keep it.

Given the unrelenting efforts by the GOP to block, repeal and gut Obamacare, it is almost comical to think that the rollout of its website would go smoothly.

Consider this: The federal government, from a cubicle at some base in this country, has the technology to identify and take out a terrorist traveling in a car in Yemen. Yet this same government does not have the ability to create a workable insurance website? You are nuts if you don't think it does.

The glitch-ridden website is not a reflection of government's incompetence; it is a reflection of the GOP's war against the health care law.

The president's so-called broken promise, meanwhile, was derived from his continued belief that the good and honorable of our politics will eventually supplant the selfish and ignoble, and not from a concerted effort to deceive the public.

The individuals whose health insurance is being canceled represent about half of the 5 percent of Americans who buy coverage on the open market. A grandfather clause in the health care law allows these individuals to keep their coverage, but only if it was in place before the law was signed in March 2010.

Because many of these plans do not meet the minimum level of coverage under Obamacare, insurers are canceling them. It is telling that after the passage of the health care law, these insurance companies would continue to sell substandard plans that leave their holders vulnerable to bankruptcy if they get sick or injured.

Bear in mind that 95 percent of insured Americans, those who are covered by group insurance provided by employers, unions, Medicare or Medicaid, do get to keep their coverage if they like it.

It is crazy that the president is being blamed for cancellations made by members of the approximately $900 billion-a-year private insurance industry, an industry that since 1999, according to Health Care for America Now, has jacked up insurance premiums by 131 percent.

It is crazy that the manufactured crisis over the botched rollout of healthcare.gov and the president's promise has buried the good the law has actually accomplished: providing an opportunity for millions without health insurance to get affordable and essential coverage, preventing insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions and from dropping coverage when people get sick, and eliminating lifetime caps on medical coverage.

These are just some of the benefits the law has already created. It also has the potential to reduce overall health care costs in the long run.

That Republicans would use a defective website and the wanton greed of a few health insurance agencies as reasons to gut the law is not surprising. That a few Democrats, worried about losing their seat in the next election, would give these Republicans cover is very disheartening.